Paradox
by LovelyLytton
Summary: Rei Hino and the man once known as Jadeite. Warning for character death and hospital setting.


**Title:** Paradox  
**Warning:** Character death, hospital setting.  
**A/N:** Written for Day Two of the Angsty April Challenge over at **shitennou_ai**.

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He always said he loved me more than life itself. Fool that I was, I didn't believe him. Our past lives were more important to me than our present ones, and I sent him away time and time again. He said one day, he'd prove his worth, one day, I'd understand.

Today I do.  
The hospital linens are stiff and white, and Makoto, stroking them while waiting with me, has already wondered why the laundry service doesn't use any fabric softener. Ami, my medical file on her lap, has explained that it's because too many people are allergic to fabric softener and in a hospital, a tiny allergic reaction might be a big, big problem.

I glance at the clock to my right, a bright pink Hello Kitty atrocity Minako has sent me. It sits next to the flowers she sent the day before, and underneath the magazines she made Makoto bring me two days ago. But Minako herself is not coming by: someone needs to deal with the others right now, and she is the best choice. Except for Usagi, of course, but she is consoling Mamoru. It's hard for him. I know how hard it is. Like him, I have no more family by blood. Like him, I have found another.

A nurse comes in and takes my temperature. They do that every hour. Then she takes my blood pressure. They do that every hour too.  
"OR will be ready for your in thirty minutes," she says, beaming. For them, today is a good day. They get to save a woman, a senator's daughter, and they get to do a procedure that is rare enough to be exciting, but promising enough to not set their teeth on edge. Exchange a heart. That's standard, boring. No novelty in that. Exchange a heart with one that is currently three doors down from here, in a plastic box, being kept alive by electricity and carefully pumped oxygen. That's new.

They say that I am so lucky that a donor was found precisely as my heart was beginning to give up. They say that it's even better that they could already extract the organ and let my own blood circulate through it for three days, so that the risk of my body rejecting it is minimised. They say that-

"Rei, are you okay?" Makoto ask, and takes my hand. Hers is warm; that feels nice. Sometimes it feels as if I've been cold for years.  
"I'm okay," I say, and try to muster a smile. Makoto is here every day. Every single day. She used to come in the afternoon and evening. Now that the heart is there, and we know where it came from, she never leaves. I think she's worried I might not accept it, but I wouldn't do that. I have been raised to believe in the power of sacrifice and the need to honour it.

My own heart has always been weak. Like my mother's. It's genetic, they say. A rare heart disease. Ami agrees, and has explained it more times than I care to hear. But neither the surgeons nor my friend understand that there is more to having a weak heart than tissue, and oxygen, and blood vessels. A weak heart is also a matter of the soul. My mother died because she loved a man who couldn't love her. I almost died because I didn't want to love a man who loved me. Love is more important than oxygen. If you have too much, or too little, it will kill you, drain you dry.

Everyone understands why not having enough love is bad. Nobody seems to realise that too much is bad too. Unless you are Usagi, of course, but the laws of the universe do not apply to her, and I am grateful for that. For other people, loving as excessively as she does is dangerous. Just look at him. Never even really knew me this time around, and yet, his love from before refused to go away and festered and grew and spiralled out of control and now he's gone for good.

The door opens again. It's my attending surgeon, his two residents and four interns trailing behind. They are all already wearing their scrubs. Here, the scrubs on the cardio-thoracic wing are green. In Mamoru's hospital, they are blue. I used to be a patient at Tokyo Gen, but when they all came back and took to spending as much time around Mamoru (and thus at the hospital) as possible, I insisted I was transferred here. I couldn't stand it, being holed up in a hospital room, and to know that he was outside, talking and laughing with Mamoru, thinking of me.

"Miss Hino, time to go," the attending tells me, sounding chipper. I should be glad that he is not worried, that none of them are, but instead, I find it inappropriate. Honouring a sacrifice means not laughing in the face of pain. I never laughed around him. And now I never will. I hold Makoto's hand tighter, pressing it with all I've got. Human contact. My friends. My princess. My future. I cannot die yet, I still have so much left to do. And he will help me do it. And that's the paradox, isn't it?

I didn't want his love, but I cannot not want his heart.

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*** **The End** ***


End file.
